Luoyang 4-Day Yuntai Mountain Red Stone Gorge Autumn Tour

An hour and a half north of Luoyang, near Jiaozuo. The ticket and the shuttle bus are bought together — 120 yuan for the ticket, 60 for the bus — and they are not separable. The shuttle is compulsory, because the sites are a long way apart and walking between them would use up the whole day. The ticket is valid for three consecutive days from the day of purchase, with unlimited entries to each site, so there is no need to buy again. Start with the Red Stone Gorge in the morning. This is the stretch most people agree is the most photogenic in the park, about two kilometres one way. The further in you go, the redder it becomes: the rock is purple-red quartz sandstone, cut into red walls by running water over hundreds of millions of years, and the colour shows up against the blue of the sky above and the green of the water below. Those two clashes of colour are why the exposure rate here is so high. The sound of the water is loud in this canyon — the path runs along the stream with the rock closing in overhead until only a strip of sky is left. It drowns out conversation, so wait for a lull before taking photographs or you will be talking over the water in every frame. In the afternoon take the Fenghuangling ropeway to the glass walkway. The ropeway is about 1,700 metres long and takes eight minutes, with eight people per cabin. Standing on the glass, the whole canyon is below you and there is nothing under your feet. People who are uneasy with heights need a moment here. The park has done the arithmetic on this route: to reach the walkway you can either take the bus to the Zhuyufeng car park — about twenty-five minutes by road plus forty on foot — or take the Fenghuangling ropeway for eight minutes and walk five. That saves close to an hour each way and nearly two hours for the round trip. Do the sums and the choice makes itself. It is windy up there, so wear a jacket, and keep a firm grip on your phone. Stay at a hotel just outside the park, a ten-minute walk from the visitor centre, with restaurants close by.

Zhuyufeng first. The ropeway goes straight to the summit in six minutes, which makes it the best value on the mountain. From the top the view runs in two directions: ridges of mountains to the north, and below them to the south the plain around Xiuwu and the North China Plain beyond. One mountain apart and two entirely different worlds. The autumn colours layer up: orange-red from the oak close by, a blue-grey haze on the distant ridges, and a thin band of mist in between. When there is a cloud sea, it is better still — cloud pushing up out of the valley and covering half the summit, leaving the peaks like small islands. It is windy up here; you will want a jacket. The rest of the morning goes to Tanpu Gorge. This is where the water is concentrated along the park — a stream running out of the gorge mouth with more than a dozen waterfalls along the cliff, named for their shapes: Dragon and Snake Pool, the Y-Shaped Falls, the Water Curtain Cave. The pools are that clear green-blue, and in sunlight you can see the stones on the bottom. Tanpu Gorge, Quanpu Gorge and the Macaque Valley share a single ticket checkpoint, so the plan for today is Tanpu Gorge and the Macaque Valley, leaving Quanpu Gorge for anyone with energy to spare on the same day. Splitting them like that halves the queueing. The afternoon goes to the Macaque Valley, where the monkeys range free through the trees. One warning here, straight from the park: do not let food or drink show, the macaques will take it. If you want to feed them, use the proper feeding point, and do not hold up bread on the boardwalk to tempt them. Beyond the valley there is a level path on to the Xiaoyao Stone Group, and by the end of it you have covered a good stretch of the day. Back to the hotel in the evening to sort out the bags for tomorrow.

The third day is Quanpu Gorge, which completes the water side of the park. It is also called Lao Tan Gou, and you get off at the same stop as Tanpu Gorge. The canyon runs about three kilometres, a U-shaped valley with high peaks on both sides and water, falls, springs and pools packed along the floor. One thing worth saying plainly first: the Cloud Terrace Waterfall at the far end, 314 metres in a single drop and the largest single-drop waterfall in Asia, is the signature sight of Yuntai Mountain — but it is seasonal. The official best viewing period is July to September, which is the rainy season when the volume is at its greatest. Late October is the dry season, and the flow is much smaller than in summer, though a heavy recent rain will improve it. Do not come expecting the summer scale of it; check the recent rainfall and the park’s notices before you set out. Even so the canyon itself is worth walking. Along the way are the Multi-Hole Spring, the Whispering Spring, the Secluded Pool, the Singing Dragon Falls and the Peacock Spring — and the names are accurate. The Multi-Hole Spring pushes water out of several holes in one stone at once; the Whispering Spring is so quiet you have to lean in to hear it. There is also a plank road called Lugong, said to have been built by a widow in ancient times, running along the cliff face. It is a little exposed, but it is the best angle on the canyon anywhere along the route. The easier way to do this is to take the electric cart for the first kilometre, five yuan one way, and walk the remaining two. Walking the whole way is about six kilometres round trip and takes two and a half hours. The cart only takes you halfway; the last kilometre or so still has to be walked, with a short climb at the end. The boardwalk is permanently damp and the stone is covered in moss, so footwear must grip. The spray is heavy — take a raincoat, or put your camera and phone in a dry bag. Water getting into a phone is the most common way a day out here goes wrong. On a sunny midday the spray often throws a rainbow. Lunch inside the park; there are food outlets around the visitor centre, and more once you are out of the gorge. If there is energy left in the afternoon, wander around the Xiaozhai Valley area. This gorge shares its checkpoint with Tanpu Gorge and the Macaque Valley, so there is no need to re-enter those. Or simply rest at the visitor centre and look through the photographs from the first two days.

Sleep in, check out. Checkout is at noon. If you did not cover everything, this morning is the time to add a piece — the ticket is valid for three consecutive days, and one night counts as one of them, so you can go back in the morning without buying anything. Quanpu Gorge is the obvious one to add. Its water is of a different character from Tanpu Gorge, more concentrated and faster. Once you have eaten, set off back to Luoyang, an hour and a half. The road runs across the northern Henan plain, freshly harvested and wide open, a strong contrast with the mountains behind. Over four days you keep three things: the red of the Red Stone Gorge, the cloud sea from Zhuyufeng and the sound of water in Quanpu Gorge. The return day has no fixed programme — pack the night before and leave your bags by the door, and note that checkout is at noon. The three-day validity of the ticket is genuinely useful here, because it means a morning can be spent on more scenery without another purchase. Most visitors say you cannot cover Yuntai Mountain in a single day, and when that is the case the right response is to choose rather than push on. In practice, if you are travelling with elderly relatives or have already walked a lot that day, doing nothing on the last morning near the hotel is entirely reasonable — the Red Stone Gorge and Zhuyufeng are already the highlights, and what is left can wait for another trip. That is a better outcome than rushing through every site and getting home exhausted.